


Beloved of The Stones

by Plant_Murderer



Category: Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Craigh na dune, F/M, contains poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-01
Updated: 2016-01-01
Packaged: 2018-05-10 22:54:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5604025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Plant_Murderer/pseuds/Plant_Murderer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A quickish AU wherein Jamie falls through the stones at Craigh na Dune. </p><p>No Frank because reasons but I like to think that I was respectful of him in his absence.<br/>(I wrote it for a secret santa thing, then figured I'd share it)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beloved of The Stones

Men are lost in the chaos of battle. It’s not just in the dying, though there’s plenty of that to be seen; men get lost. A body gets turned around dodging out of the way of a musket ball or trying to get behind a bastard with a knife. A fist strikes a head just so and suddenly a fellow is standing dazed in the middle of the field with guns blazing on either side with no way to know friend from foe. A coward’s flight and the shame of it bar the known ways back. Men are lost in battle.

Some never return, never come scrambling out of the smoke, and they’re said to have died or been captured. Friends and families, of course, need answers. The ones that they accept and pass on tend to serve well enough. Even manage to guess right, often as not. It has to be one of a rather short list of options; missing and alive, missing and dead, and a judgment of whether the missing man is one way or the other by choice. Battlefields are kind like that, simple.

Well… generally speaking.

* * *

 

Jamie felt a bit of fool when he thought back on it later. Everyone knew about the stones at Craigh na Dune and the stories around them. Everyone who’d ever heard story or song would know better than to lean unthinkingly against one, even in the midst of a skirmish. All the bloodshed, all the souls crossing over… of course the stones would be primed for a bit of work, of course the walls between worlds would be thinner.

He wasn’t much thinking about it then though, just the wound in his side, the peculiar weight of his head, and the bleariness of his eyes.

“Well that’s me done then,” Jamie thought, laying his head back and watching the battle progress around him. The stones were untouched, he’d only ended up so close to them himself when he’d been injured and stumbling blindly. No help was coming and he was losing blood. He reached for his gun and took aim, determined to make a good death, to strike at the men who endangered his comrades’ lives with his last, but then, suddenly a scream rent the air and his world went inside out and backwards.

Dazed, lightheaded, and still losing quite a bit of blood, Jamie was lucky enough to miss the stranger he fired his gun at.

A lovely, dark haired woman took the gun from his hands like grown person taking a toy from a child and began to scold him as she ripped open his shirt and began to examine his wound.

“War’s over you bloody idiot,” She scolded. “What in God’s name are you doing out here with that antique? And why are you dressed like that?”

Jamie moved to speak but was quickly scolded again.

“Be quiet!” She said. “There’ll be time enough for you to explain yourself once you’re properly seen to. I was a nurse in the war. I can get you patched up enough for the moment. How did you even get here?”

“Are you wantin’ me to speak or not, lass?” Jamie asked on a laugh. “I’ll do as you ask once I understand, but you’re not being very clear as yet. And what is yer name?”

The woman used his shirt to bandage the wound and slow the bleeding.

“I’ve a kit in the car, but you really do need a hospital. My name is Claire Randall, and you, daft man, have you done something to your shoulder as well?” she asked, immediately shifting to prod at it, exasperated displeasure washing over her fair face.

“Well I wouldna say it was me that did it, but it does pain me greatly,” Jamie replied evenly. Something in his soul chilled at her name, but she was helping him despite his clothing marking him as an enemy of that name. Speaking of clothing, she was wearing rather less than he was accoustomed to seeing. Where had the stones brought him? “You wouldna be any relation to a Captain Jack Randall, would you?”

She paused, apparently surprised by the question. Then her face took on a kind of abiding sadness that Jamie recognized but couldn’t quite place, before answering, “I suppose I am, distantly and through marriage. My husband, my late husband, was one or another of his descendents. His last, possibly. He died during the war.”

A widow then, but not dressed in black. She wore a black band around her arm, Jamie noticed.

“A grave loss,” Jamie said, “As it must pain you, I’m sorry for it, but grateful that it’s made you no less kind. Do you suppose you could fix my shoulder? An’ would you tell me the year? It’s comin’ to me that I might have lost count while getting myself all bloodied and doing my shoulder in.”  

Claire laughed a bit at that, a sad smile making its way across her face. “It is 1945. May I ask where you lost count? And a name would be nice, as well.”

“1743,” Jamie said, “Name is Jamie Fraser. James Alexander Malcolm Mackenzie Fraser if we’re being right and proper about it. Yours is much shorter. I think I’d happily give you the last of mine if you could fix my shoulder.”

She met his eyes for the first time and the air between them charged. He could see the exact moment her husband came to mind though, and she opened his shirt and pulled at it this way and that until she could see his shoulder well enough.

“I could pop it back into place for you,” Claire told him, “but I doubt you’d be so free with the giving of your name after. It’ll hurt a sight more than it does now before it gets better.”

Jamie took a deep breath and then nodded. “It’ll hurt even more’n that if I try it myself and break the thing.”

Claire gave him the belt from her shift to bite down on, and wrenched his shoulder back into place. she’d not lied about how much it would hurt, not in the least, but it felt so good afterwards that he thought it a fair trade. She put the belt back on and then helped him stand.

Pain settling into a more tolerable level, Jamie looked around and tried to make sense of the idea that he’d fallen through time over two centuries. It was a slippery thought, darting away constantly. The land was not that different, surely something must have changed? He followed Claire a ways before stopping short at the gravel where the thing Claire called a ‘car’ was parked, the narrow gray strangeness of… a road?

“Gracious Lord,” Jamie muttered as Claire pushed him to sit down on one the seats in the thing, and pulled out a large bag of curious instruments and bandages more white than clouds and smoother some of his better made shirts.

She changed out the improvised bandages for proper clean ones, taking the time to clean the wound with some strange burning liquid first. Jamie tried to be still and focus on staying in the moment, on breathing in and out. No one he’d ever known was still alive. He tried to keep breathing. He had nothing but the kindness of this stranger who, unless the world had changed a sight more than he’d have thought it would, would probably think him mad. He had to try explaining though. He’d thought he was dying just hours before, so really, what did he have to lose?

“What do you know about the stones there,” Jamie asked, nodding back in the direction they’d come from.

“Not much, I’m afraid,” Claire said. “Pagan rituals and fairy stories.”

“Then you know enough to begin,” Jamie said. “Don’t suppose there’s a story about  a Scotsman that fell through them?”    

“Most of the stories I heard were women,” Claire answered. “all returned home in the end, though not always happily so. You lost count of the years two centuries ago. You claim to have fallen through the stones?”

She asked the question on a laugh as she put away her kit.

“Just so. Perhaps they tell my tale at Leoch, if the Mackenzies have not moved or died.”

Claire fastened him onto the seat with a strap and brought the metal beast to life, moving them along faster than any horse he’d ever ridden.

“I could take you there, to Leoch, but no one tells tales there much anymore,” she said lightly, “and I’d like to be certain you’d survive the trip.”

There was silence then, and the blurring of the world outside, the smoothness of the motion lulled Jamie to sleep.

The great building that Claire called a hospital was full of brightness and things beyond Jamie’s reckoning. He found himself adding to his store of information about Claire, because trying to process a whole world at once was a dizzying prospect. She was not, as he’d thought, wearing unusually little clothing, rather, most women seemed to go about in fewer layers. She was clearly knowledgeable about healing and the like and all that remained for those who healed for a living to do was stitch up his wounds and put a wee bit of blood back into him while congratulating the Sassenach on her skill.

When they had him good and propped up on a bed, newly stitched and free of pain for the first time as he could remember in days, he asked her a question.

“Now, what’s a Sassenach widow doing in these parts?” Jamie asked.

“Is my being a foreigner more strange than you apparently being a time traveler?” She asked in return. “Who’s more out of place, I wonder?”

“Still you, I’m sorry to say,” he teased. “Humor a wounded man, would you?”

“Frank planned the trip before he died. Wrote out all of these genealogical notes in his free time during the war. He wanted to come here and learn about his ancestors,” Claire explained. “After his funeral, I thought I’d take the trip for him and learn what I could, get some notes on the local plant life, decide where to go next…”

“An’ have you settled on a plan then?” Jamie asked. He shifted, oddly aware of his bare skin. They’d bandaged him and given him a pair of loose fitting cotton trousers to wear but they’d left out a shirt for some reason. A twittering pair of ‘nurses’ had claimed that they were, down to the last one, all in the laundry and would be for possibly hours or days. Claire had smirked a bit at that.

“Might like to be a midwife,” she mused, answering his question, “or I could probably make a fair living as a nurse in some busy part of somewhere. Perhaps I’ll buy a vase, and picture frames, little pretty glass things that mean a body is planning to be still enough to keep them safe and whole. It’s what Frank would want, maybe. I could want it too, if I gave it an honest try. Never had that before, proper stillness.”  

Jamie watched as the fiery, passionate woman he was half in love with seemed to drift to sleep, exposing a new Claire, no less beautiful and determined but with a slightly muted way about her.

 It occurred to Jamie that though he’d been teasing, it was quite possible that Claire was more out of place than him, born in the wrong time perhaps. If that muted quality was what the world would want from her, it felt almost a waste for there to be so much more inside.

“Would that suit you,” Jamie asked her, “Really and truly? Proper stillness?”

“If I were Frank’s wife and not his widow,” Claire replied, “it would have had to suit me, and I’d have loved every moment of it. It would have been part of him. I think it can be part of him still. I will try to love it in his place. But why should you care about any of this? Me nattering on to the wounded man. You’ll be in hospital for the night. Tomorrow, I could take you up to Leoch and we’ll figure out what to do with you, maybe you’ll tell me where you’re really from?”

“I could do that,” Jamie said. “Only don’t leave me here longer than the night. I’d be lost without you Claire Randall.”

“Claire Elizabeth Beauchamp Randall,” She corrected with a smile, “to use every name I’ve ever been entitled to. Still just four to your five.”

“I’ve offered to make us even,” Jamie said. “The offer still stands unanswered.”

“And it will stay that way,” Claire shot back, “at least for tonight.”

Claire left and Jamie sat up in bed a while longer, trying to make sense of his life and the world around him. He’d only really managed to adjust to the light when he fell asleep again.

* * *

 

Jamie watched the nurses glare at Claire while she wrote the things she’d need so the healers would let him leave. She’d gotten on fine with them the day before, but something about showing up with a freshly purchased pair of trousers and a loose fitting shirt with buttons up the front had them ready to make her disappear into the winding confusion of the building, never to return. He smiled at them and stood close enough block any of them that tried anything, and that seem to garner a bit of a mixed reaction. When Claire led him out to the car, Jamie breathed a sigh of relief and then laughed.

“My head might swell if I stayed in there too long,” he said. “They liked the sight of me more that little, they did.”

“It’s only because they have eyes,” Claire replied. “You know damned well how you look.”

“Aye, but I did not know till just now that you found me pleasing as well,” Jamie teased.

Claire narrowed her eyes at him, then relented with a smile. More awake this time, Jamie had to fight to keep his expression respectable as they moved through town. Familiar and not, the world had clearly changed. The roads were smoother. The air smelled different, empty almost, without the scents he was used to and metallic in places. There was a loudness to the world; the hum of power in the walls, and so many more people, it was a relief to get out of the city and back into the countryside with its hills and expanses.     

“There’s a story,” Claire began after a while, “about a Scots warrior, honorable and fair, who was so loved by the stones that they snatched him from the hill during a battle. The Priest  who’s been helping me track Frank’s line told me when I asked.”

“That’s a pretty way to put it,” Jamie replied. “I don’t suppose you know how it ends.”

Jamie watched the side of her face that he could see properly while she drove, and he noted something of an ironic twist to her mouth as she replied, “if it’s you, it’d be a shame to spoil it. perhaps you should dream up a good ending before we get to Leoch. If you are who you say, if that’s where people would have talked of you… I’m afraid this might be hard for you.”

“Does it stand?” Jamie asked, letting his voice go quiet as he tried to imagine what two hundred years might do to place.

“It’s not what I’m told it was,” Claire replied, “but some still stands, a ruin. I packed a lunch, and extra. We have the day. You can take your time exploring, or go somewhere else if it disturbs you. Only say when you’re ready to leave.”

“I will,” Jamie vowed and there was quiet.

Claire parked the car not far off the road and lead the way forward, though there were landmarks that Jamie was beginning to see.  

The fields had grown over, untended and left to fade into the surroundings. He and Claire were totally alone. They’d never have been alone so close to the castle in his day, just over a day before. Then they saw it, a broken sword jutting up from the ground.  Claire was right to call it a ruin thought it was far from unrecognizable. It was smaller, emptier, and less whole. It didn’t feel real to look on the place and see it as it was. This was not a castle meant to hunch like an old man, why did it not stand prouder?

“It was not my home,” Jamie told Claire. “I was taking refuge with cousins here. A wanted man I am- was-  but Calum, The Mackenzie, took me in and offered me protection. I lived here for a time. I liked it.”

“Come, let me give you the tour,” Jamie said, and Claire walked at his side as he entered. She flicked on something that she called a torch, but without flames and lit their way inside the dark rooms. He showed her the main hall and the kitchen, showed her where the healer, the Beaton, worked.

When they walked outside and ate lunch on the grass, he asked her a question that he should have asked the day before, when she’d mentioned that she was on holiday.

“How long will it be before you’re due back in England?” He said, looking off into the distance.

“I leave in two days,” she answered. “That’s the longest I could stay and still save enough to live on while I look for work, and a smaller place to keep my vase and glass things.”

“Could I come with you?” Jamie asked. Even as he did, he knew that there was no place in Claire’s world for him. There only barely seemed to be a place in it for her.

“I should not want you to,” Claire said. “Tell me more stories. Why are you a fugitive? There’s still time.”

So they talked, exploring the area thoroughly as they exchanged stories about war and life, but also about family. Claire talked about traveling and working with her uncle, about the mud and long days and bloodiness of the war and Jamie couldn’t help but listen eagerly. The more he did, the less he was certain that a quiet life with her breakables could truly satisfy her. He thought about the end of the tale that she said was told about his disappearance. Why wouldn’t she tell him how it ended?

They ate dinner back in town, in a small enough tavern. It had been a long, confusing day, but the food was good. They were quiet together, all talked out, but they watched each other as though they were still speaking. Jamie felt his face warm under her scrutiny but was glad to look up and find her just as flushed. There was a spark between them that couldn’t be denied, but the world itself seemed to stand around it, hiding it and blocking its heat. Claire’s husband had been dead for close to a year, and though they’d barely seen each other in the four preceding it, she clearly loved the man.

They were from vastly different worlds, but as they laughed quietly at the antics of the people at the counter, the time seemed like nothing. Claire snuck Jamie into her room at the inn that night. He had nowhere else to go, so she set the alarm for early morning, and he slept in blankets on the floor.

“Are you sure you’ll be alright down there?” Claire asked sleepily as Jamie began to nod off.  Jamie sighed. She was so close and he could do nothing about the way the night gown she wore clung to her body, about the way her smile had nearly sent him back to the horrid ‘hospital’ several times that night.

* * *

 

The next day, Claire drove them back up to Leoch and Jamie showed her places that he was fond of in the surrounding area, still older and more crumbled ruins, places where he’d been and liked the views. They were quieter that day, roaming the countryside as Claire occasionally pointed out useful plants and things or looked them up in a book that she’d brought along.

When the sun went low, Jamie made a bold request.

“Come with me to Craigh na Dune,” he said. “It’s your last night before you go back. Shouldn’t you make it a proper adventure? Watch the sunrise with me there.”

“Or we could go back to my bed and your soft bit of floor,” Claire suggested. “It’s a really nice bed.”

“I wouldn’t know, would I?” Jamie replied. “Come with me, Claire. We won’t get another chance.”

Jamie watched as Claire’s expression shifted through several emotions. Exasperation was there, and sadness, but there was also a wonder there, the helplessness of a person faced with the terribly risky proposition of getting exactly what they most desire.

Then her mouth was on his, warm and lovely till she pulled away. He kissed her as if in reply, kissed her as well as he could until at last he needed to breathe.

“Come watch the stars, and the sunrise, Claire.”

“Alright, then. Let’s go,” she said.

Carefully, she followed the roads back towards the hill in the growing dark. She parked the car not far from the road, and they walked, hand in hand. Claire brought her plant book and journal and, for some odd reason, her medical bag.

“Your bandages will need changing in the morning,” she said when he looked at it. Jamie shrugged and accepted it. It was hard to take issue with things with her hand in his.

As they left the tree line and walked up the hill, it was like stepping into the stars. There were not as many as Jamie expected, the lights from the town dimmed a few, but it was still a breathtaking sight. Even the lights from the town, still jarring up close, were lovely with distance. They sat down outside of the stone circle. Jamie pulled Claire close and kissed her again.

He wanted to sweep her into his arms, but one was still in a sling. He pulled her still closer with the uninjured one; his hand resting on her mourning band.

She looked down at it, clearly thinking of her husband. She smiled and it was the muted version of her smile that seemed to belong to Frank Randall in a way, even now that the man was dead. Part of her, Jamie realized, would always long for the frippery and stillness, the security that had once been in her future.

Jamie found that he could tolerate that well enough as long as part of her still blazed and swore at injured strangers, as long as she stopped his heart with her smiles.

When the sky began to lighten, Jamie told Claire a tale.

“I could say that I met you in France,” he began. “Beauchamp’s a French name. You were with your husband in Paris, and when I fled back to France you were a widow who did me some kindness. You wanted more time though, to grieve and set his affairs in order. It was chance that we met on the road. You were on your way to the Mackenzie to ask for news of me, for I’d promised you my name and you were wont to collect. There are them as would be happy to see me wed to foreigner and out of line to lead. Leoch lacks a healer, and my love and your use would cover all manner of things.”

“A pretty story,” Claire said. “I might even know French well enough to help maintain it, but I’d have to leave everything in the world.”

“Not everything,” Jamie argued. “Of course I understand wanting to be in the world that you know. I want it myself, but Claire I want you, and I’d be a fool not try an’ have you if I might. If you don’t want me, or would not want to be my wife,  I don’t think I could make you, and I wouldn’t.”

“Jamie, I just finished a war and you want me to go back,” Claire said.

“I want you with me,” Jamie countered. “I will protect you with all that I am, with my name and my body. I would offer to stay, but I don’t know that either of us would be happy here.”

Claire kissed him again, and turned to watch the sunrise. As it did, the wind picked up and she stood. Jamie watched her walk away from him, to take up the bag with her medical things. She’d slipped her plant book and journal into at some point during the evening.   

Jamie couldn’t breath as he watched her, then suddenly he could. He let out a great bark of laughter she walked into the circle of stones. She turned and held out a hand to him. He ran over and took it in his own. He kissed that hand and pressed it to his heart. The wind pushed them towards the center stone, but Jamie spoke over it, saying, “I do not know if you’ll recall my family’s motto? It will be yours too now.”

Claire laughed and smiled, she drew him closer and wrapped his arm around her waste. Jamie held on tight as she replied, “Je suis prest.”

Jamie watched as her hand touched the stone, and there was screaming and motion.

When it stopped, they were in a different world, a better one for both of them, and also the same one that they’d left. The days-old remnants of battle lay around the hill. Eventually they’d stop somewhere and explain that Claire had been set upon by bandits before she’d reached Jamie, that her retainers had gone off once they realized that their mistress was in good hands, but first they walked back down the hill. Hand in hand, step by step, they moved together into a new life.

* * *

There once was a man, and a very fine man,

Whom Craigh na Dune beloved,

A sword was deadly in his hand,

Sharp eyes kept watch above it,

And fair was he, and handsome too,

With many maidens spurned.

And so the stones did fall for him,

And as all did in their turn.

 

The stones gave a boon, and a very fine boon,

As he lay dying and bleeding,

They took up with a yank and croon,      

And oversaw his healing.

And they found a lass, a tearstruck lass,

To whom they’d taken liking,

And gave her to our warrior fair,

As quick as flash of lighting. 

 

They sent them back, the battle done,

Their love, a shield defending,  

And so they lived, in joy as one,

Until their shared life’s ending.

 


End file.
